


A dead and gone bouquet

by Lilliburlero



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21833089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: The National Trust offers a sniff at a money-making opportunity for Button House.
Comments: 34
Kudos: 79
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. The Scheme

**Author's Note:**

  * For [croissantkatie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/croissantkatie/gifts).



‘Well, first of all, I have to say I’m sorry I can’t bring you _better_ news.’

Still beaming bravely, Alison made a sort of vocal-cords warm-up noise, her eyes glazing over.

You wouldn’t believe,’ Mike interjected, ‘how many variants on that phrase we’ve heard over the last eighteen months.’

‘Yeah. You need a good few in your repertoire in my line. But I come from a family of undertakers, so—’

The man from the National Trust had been a bit of a surprise. They’d expected someone older, tweedier, more fastidious. Craig’s unlined, freckled face was as open and unpretentious as a 24-hour Tesco Metro, one of his overdeveloped, clean-shaven calves was the canvas for a intricate scene derived from Hokusai, and he never seemed to need to wear a coat or sweater over chunky, gym-worked pecs and biceps.

Lady Fanny did not approve.

‘Alison! I cannot credit that this common little man is qualified to decide if our house is to be taken into Stewardship For The Nation. Can it truly be so?’

Alison gave a tiny, affirmative wince.

‘It’s not all bad, I promise, guys. I’ll come to that in a mo. But I’m afraid the main historical interest of the site is still—’ Craig gestured at the floorboards.

‘Well, it was,’ said Mike. ‘Until it was sensitively removed in one hundred and seventeen body bags for forensic archaeological examination.’

‘No. Er, that can’t have been easy.’

Alison and Mike shared a glance. The Plague Pit had been philosophical about their exhumation. But all of them being philosophical at once could get a bit overwhelming.

‘It was frightful,’ Fanny sighed. ‘The stoicism of the peasantry is to be commended, naturally, but if I’d heard one more of those wretched yokels remark that he supposed he was better off, _getting shot of the old carcase, ha’n’t ‘ad no use for it these six ‘unnerd three score year_ , or something of that bucolic sort, I shouldn’t have been res—’

‘It was—an upheaval for everyone,’ Alison said firmly. ‘I mean. Us both. That’s why we were hoping you might—like, the house has so much history. There’s something from every period you can think of. Tudor, Georgian, Victorian—’ She crossed her fingers, hoping she hadn’t summoned the rest of them to Fanny’s side, but Thomas’s pale breeches were already evident below the dado rail. ‘Regency,’ she added defeatedly.

Materialising fully, Thomas punched the air and beckoned frantically.

‘That’s sort of the problem,’ Craig said. ‘The Buttons—going back pretty much to the start, to Wynkyn de Bouton, who became the first Master of of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers also to be Lord Mayor of London, and made his pile, essentially, by playing both sides off against each other in the Wars of the Roses—’

‘I have never sought to conceal, as vulgar snobs might venture to do,’ shrieked Fanny, ‘the origins of our family in Trade—’

’The rough sort, eh? Trade—rough, get it?’ Julian’s snigger preceded him through a closed door.

‘My ruff, that would be good, and my gown, my doublet, my hose, my garters, my shoes, my whole body actually—’ mumbled Sir Humphrey’s head from under Craig’s chair. ‘No, too much to ask, I suppose—’

‘—the very backbone of our Empire! But to imply that our pristine ancestor, our primogenital haberdasher, our own Dick Whittington, was a species of _turncoat_!’

‘—and every generation of Buttons since, has—well, they’ve looked around them and—’

Kitty popped up through the coffee table. ‘Did someone say haberdasher? Can we go to the haberdasher’s together, Alison? I do _so_ love ribbons, and lace handkerchiefs and gloves and darling little shoe buckles! It would be such a treat!’

‘—made sure they knew where the flow was going before they joined it. And that’s reflected in the architecture: all very typical, all very twenty or thirty years after the mainstream trend, and mostly done a tiny bit on the cheap—’

‘Oh dear,’ said Pat, who had appeared with the Captain in the bay window recess, ‘I never even met the family, but I know Fanny won’t like—’

‘Cheap! Cheap! Cheap is what you are, you hooligan! Vandal! Yahoo!’

‘Yahoo. Yahoo. Yahoo? Me like. Yahoooooooooo,’ Robin echoed experimentally, before disappearing again on one of his ineluctable Neolithic missions.

‘—which made it all the easier for grandchildren to tear down their grandparents’ work and put up something equally—’ Craig looked, at last, at a loss for an adjective both tactful and truthful. ‘Unremarkable. And while that’s obviously of interest in itself, we already have Monk’s Culvery, which is just twelve miles away, and presents a more—accessible narrative on a similar sort of theme. But, anyway, the good news—’

‘Alison, I must insist that you eject this—this—person! Who is, surely, in any event, an impostor!’ Fanny bent to examine Craig’s apologetic, oblivious features, nose-to-nose. ‘He reminds me—yes, I’m almost certain of it— _the perfidious groundsman!_ Why, he might be a direct descendant!’

‘‘Considering the, eh, proclivities _there_ , I would have thought it pretty—’ Julian remarked.

‘—Open House Summer Scheme—’

‘Pretty what? Oh, yes, _rather_ ,’ mused the Captain, who had been contemplating the surfing slogan on Craig’s snug pink t-shirt for a solid minute.

‘—qualify for administrative and research support, marketing—’

Fanny straightened up, wringing her hands. ’Alison, I do not pretend to understand the inner workings of your marriage. Often, the glimpses I have perceived therein have scandalised me. But upon one matter I cede expertise to no-one—trust me, I know the physiognomy of a thief of husbands! You must not trust Michael to this man!’

‘Fanny. Fanny! _Fanny!_ Would you just, please—’

Craig’s earnestly sunny expression clouded with bewilderment. ‘Sorry—pardon me, Alison?’

The ghosts backed into the silent, observant semi-circle that they invariably made when they’d succeeded in provoking the living into a faux pas. If they could eat, one of them—Pat, probably—would have handed out popcorn.

‘Oh God, I said it out loud, didn’t I? I meant, er, _funny_ yes, ha ha, funny, funny, _funny_ that you should, say—um, what _were_ we saying, actually?’

Mike laughed nervously. ’The uh, scheme? We can apply for a grant for repairs and making the house stable for visitors, and public liability and that, and they’ll send an intern—’

‘Right. The scheme.’

Craig jumped to his feet, suddenly bloodhound-alert, nostrils flaring. ’Guys, like, I’m sorry, but I just got this really strong—I really think something is on fire? Should we check it out?’

‘It’s probably nothing, mate,’ Mike said. ‘Happens a lot. Basement gas. But yeah, let's, um—yeah—‘ He gestured towards the door.

Mary slowly withdrew from the back of Craig’s chair, shuddering. The other ghosts made appreciative teeth-sucking noises, and nodded.

‘Thank you,’ Alison mouthed.

Mary wagged her finger. ‘All right. But thou ow’st me one.’

* * *

‘They were there, weren’t they?’ Mike said over tea and biscuits in the kitchen.

Alison nodded.

‘All of them?’

‘All of them at once.’

‘Did you catch any of what Craig said?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, it’s sort of an outreach scheme, I suppose. For properties that don’t quite qualify as nationally important, but—’

‘Don’t let Fanny hear you say that.’

‘How?’ Mike looked over one hunched shoulder.

‘Fair point. We’re alone, by the way. You’re quite right, that cable package was the best investment we ever made.’

Mike relaxed slightly. ‘They give us a grant, topped up by an interest-free loan, for the overheads, essential maintenance and whatnot, and some admin support; the intern they’re sending out is an archivist and history grad, so they can help us write the guidebook and the script for the tours—’

‘Tours?’

‘Yeah, and over six weeks in the summer the house is open to the public, eleven quid a head for adults, six for kids and OAPs, family ticket twenty-five, and if it all goes well the proceeds—‘

‘—might cover that month’s loan repayment?’

‘Yeah. Something like that. But Nadia’s coming up from the village with the coffee van, to do cream teas, and she’ll give us fifteen percent of the take for the pitch, and—’ his eyes widened in hopeless hopefulness.

‘And?’

‘And… it’ll be fun? Find out more about the history of the place, and—’ he paused, Hob-nob in mid-air. ‘They're not going to like it, are they?’

‘No.’ Alison rested her lower lip on the edge of her mug. ‘I’m afraid they’re going to bloody _love it_.’


	2. Jaye

The intern had a lot of hair, earrings and scarves, a mustard-yellow boilersuit, and silver Doc Martens. In roughly that order.

‘Hey, great to meet you. I’m Jaye Braxton. And to get the awkward gender bit out of the way, I use they pronouns.’

‘Um. Yeah? Me? Alison? She. Her. Obviously. Is it obvious?’

‘Never hurts to say.’

‘Right! Absolutely! Um—anyway—nice to—’ They shook hands. ‘Come in. Let’s have a cuppa before we get started. Down here.’

‘It must have been one hell of a surprise, inheriting this place. Craig told me a bit about that.’

‘You have _no idea_.’

‘Yeah, it’s not quite how inheritance law usually works, except in Agatha Christie adaptations.’

‘Believe me, that was the absolute least of it. After you.’

Jaye looked around. ’Nice Victorian scullery sink.’

‘Is it? I keep smashing plates off the—have a seat. Tea? Coffee? Pretty basic, sorry, PG Tips or—’

‘Tea’s great. Milk, no sugar.’

Alison put on the kettle and opened the pantry door, keeping her refrain of _please please please be somewhere else creepy Black Death pantry child please thank you_ even more conspicuously silent than usual. It worked, this time.

‘Ha! Empty.’

‘Sorry,’ Jaye said. ‘What?’

‘Oh, um. The pantry. Bit—empty. Except for the twenty-three jars of gooseberry jam that we made because we had—um, a lot of gooseberries, but we can’t give them away because I’m not sure we got the sterilising right and we don’t want to chuck them out because waste but all the same, botulism. Mike’s still got the scars.’

‘My nan used to make jam, and it was a bit woe betide if we got under her feet at a crucial moment.’

‘No, I mean literal scars, this big bubble of burning sugar sort of exploded and—anyway, look, kettle’s boiled.’

Robin was hanging out in the fridge. He didn’t do his usual jump-scare, but looked thoughtful, stroking his beard. The fridge light flickered gently.

‘Ooh. Oooh. Who?’

Alison put her finger to her lips. ‘Jaye. They—oh, just go away,’ she mouthed. ‘Important visitor. Tell you later.’

Robin ignored her and shambled across the kitchen to peer over Jaye’s shoulder.

‘Important,’ he intoned. ‘They know—story. Ancestors.’

‘Duh. They’re a historian,’ Alison muttered, dumping the used teabags in the bin. She looked up and around at Robin's shaggy back. ‘Hang on a minute, how can you t—’

‘Pardon? Were you talking to me?’ Jaye asked.

‘I—uh—was just saying, must be interesting, being a historian. How did you get into that? There you go. And some biccies.’

‘Cheers. Well I’m not exactly. History was my first degree, and then I did an MA in archive management, but really I’m interested in curation and outreach,’ Jaye took a sip of tea and gave a bilious, uncontrollable grimace, and swallowed in the way people do when they’d much rather spit. Robin looked inexplicably satisfied.

‘Sorry—did I put sugar in by accident? Or the milk? It’s in date, but _someone_ —’ Alison made a growling face at Robin, who stuck out his tongue in solemn response, and shuffled off. ‘I mean, the seal on the fridge is a bit dodgy. I can make another one if you don’t mind black—’

‘No, really, it’s OK. The tea’s fine, it’s me. It’s sort of a weird story. I have these—um, when I was twelve, I was knocked off my bike by this complete idiot, speeding, blind bend—’

‘Oh my god, I’m sorry.’

‘And I had pretty severe head injuries. I was in a coma for a couple of weeks, and when I came around everything was scrambled, verbal and visual processing, motor skills, the lot. Eventually it all settled back into place, except sometimes I get these really strong olfactory hallucinations—smells, you know, of things that aren’t there? The one I just had was pretty gross—have you ever been near a tannery? With a touch of burning dung. It’s gone now. Unsettling though. They’re exactly like real smells, except they don’t fade, they just turn on and off like a light. It only happens every so often, but it is strangely—localised? Like, I can go back to a place and I’ll have exactly the same—’

‘Oh. My. God.’ Alison’s mouth hung open. ‘You can—smell—them. Jaye, if I told you—if I told you I don't think those—those aren’t hallucinations, would you think I was utterly insane?’

‘Well,’ Jaye shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not _utterly_. But seriously, I’ve heard it all, the hippies, the Wiccans, the fundies—I had a neighbour who wanted to exorcise me, she meant well, but my mum had to get quite fierce. It’s just a brain misfire, that’s all.’

‘Look, eighteen months ago, I would totally have agreed with you. I’ve no time for any sort of woo-woo at all. Then—well, then I fell out of an upstairs window...’

* * *

‘We can talk now, right?’ Mike ventured, that night in bed.

‘Yep. _Game of Thrones_. They’ve all got something to say about that, though I wish I hadn’t introduced Julian to the term "sexposition." '

‘So, how did it go? I’m sorry I didn’t get home on time—’

‘They can smell them.’

‘Who can—smell? Who? Sorry, _what_?’

‘Look, OK. Yeah. Let’s start at the beginning. Jaye. They—they’re non-binary—’

‘Like Sam Smith?’

‘Yeah! Well, no, not really. Unless Sam Smith has an Afro, a first from Cambridge and an MA in archive management these days?'

‘I dunno, I don’t have time to keep up with the tabloids. You know, with the whole _two jobs_ thing.’

‘Robin’s very excited. It’s not always easy to work out what he's saying, he’s learned so many languages over four thousand years that he couldn’t be bothered with modern English much. But I think the general idea was that in his time the tribe’s—priest, I suppose, was sort of automatically considered neither a man nor a woman. And they kept all the stories and lore and magic stuff in their heads, so Jaye being a historian makes perfect sense to him, except he thinks they can—fly?’

‘It’s more like a sort of astral projection, I think. The person goes into a trance and their soul travels, often by entering an animal or a bird. Common to a lot of shamanic belief systems.’

Alison blinked and leaned away in mock alarm. ‘All right?’

‘ _National Geographic_. What do the rest of them have to say?’

‘Mary thinks they’re a manifestation of the Devil, but she thinks that about swans, toilet paper, bent sticks and Jaffa Cakes as well.’

‘She’s right about the Jaffa Cakes—’

‘ _Someone_ always eats the Jaffa Cakes, though, and it's not me. Then Thomas started telling me a long story about his uncle who ran off to New England and became a follower of someone called the Public Universal Friend, or the Puff for short, and then it turned out that Kitty’s adoptive cousin's cousin was a member of the same Quaker congregation as the Puff’s mother, so that got all very involved and seventeen-hundreds for a while. Fanny said sex had never made much sense to her in the first place, people could be bees or flowers for all she cared, as long as they didn’t pretend to like flowers when they liked bees better—no, I couldn't make head nor tail of it either. I think the Captain fancies Jaye a bit, but he's confused about whether he needs to be confused about that, and then Pat started going on about Boy George, so obviously “Karma Chameleon” got stuck in my head—’

‘Don’t—oh, no too late.' Mike wiggled his shoulders semi-voluntarily. 'Karma, karma, karma cham—argh! What about the Tory MP one?’

‘Julian said something incredibly offensive and creepy, but that's more or less everything Julian says, so.' She shrugged. 'And Humphrey—no-one knows where Humphrey’s head is at the moment, so he’s got other things to worry about.’

‘Aaaah. Great.’

‘But talking of heads—what I started to say at the beginning— the important thing. Jaye had a head injury too. But different from mine. They can’t see or hear the ghosts, but they can—smell them?’

‘ _Smell_ them?’

‘Which I can’t. Except Mary, everyone can smell Mary, if you walk through her.’

‘The burning… What do the rest of them smell like?’

‘Well, mostly better than Mary—except Robin, apparently. They were, um, just working out leather tanning when he was alive. And Julian wears _a lot_ of Brut cologne.’

‘Ew. Year 9 locker-room flashbacks.’

‘Yeah. And we probably shouldn’t let Jaye go down in the basement, not without some sort of mask, anyway. So, anyway, I told them about the ghosts, and I think they—sort of? Believe me?’

‘Well—that’s…good? For the research, right? You can be honest about asking the ghosts things.’

‘Except—I dunno. They don’t like—I think it’s a bit like when you’re in prison?’

'I've never been in prison. Neither have you.’

‘No, but you know, like they say it’s it’s really really rude, the worst thing you can do—to ask someone what they’re in for? It’s like that with the ghosts. They don’t like talking about their lives at all.’

‘Frankly, it sounds like they do nothing else.’

'Well. Not lives, so much, as— _deaths_?’

The distant strains of ‘The Rains of Castermere’ sounded along the corridor from the den.

‘Oh God.’

‘The Red Wedding.’

‘Yup. Brace yourself, Mike. I think I’m going to be called upon to offer _explanations_.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More information on the [Public Universal Friend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Universal_Friend).


	3. Fragments from a Guidebook

The site of Button House has been inhabited from the earliest times. The modern dining-room, partitioned from the Great Hall in the 1780s to accommodate a new fashion for informal family meals, is believed to stand upon the epicentre of a Neolithic temple complex devoted to astronomical observation and moon-worship. Artefacts retrieved when the ornamental lake was dug in 1810, then thought to be Roman, can in fact be dated to around 2000BCE, and include the so-called ‘Button Chessboard’, a cross-hatched stone slab which, although possibly used for some early board-game, is more likely to have served a ritual purpose. The Chessboard has been housed in Streweminster Museum since 1969. 

* * *

Part of the present-day vestibule and library extension stand on a 14th century mass grave, believed to date from an outbreak of bubonic plague in the early 1360s, rather than the more notorious epidemic of 1347-9. Local memory of the site of this ‘plague pit’ may account for the relatively low price of £66 6s (about £70,000 in today’s values) for which Wynkyn de Bouton, Master of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers and Lord Mayor of London, was able to obtain the estate, which then extended considerably beyond the current boundaries, in 1467. Excavations are ongoing, with an initial report expected early in 2022.

* * *

The Great Hall is the only part of the 15th-century manor house to survive, albeit in a much-altered state. It was in this room that Henry VIII was entertained during the Christmas season of 1544. Hoping to impress the ageing and tyrannical monarch, the newly-ennobled Sir Humphrey Button (1499-1544) staged an elaborate Arthurian masque, in which he took the part of the giant Green Knight who interrupts King Arthur’s festivities, demanding that one of the Round Table play a deadly game of severing heads with him. Unfortunately, the mechanism designed to produce the illusion of decapitation failed, and his son, Fulke Button, who appeared as Gawain, actually struck his father’s head from his body. Shortly afterwards Sir Fulke (1524-91) began work on the costly and elaborate brick façade, which still fronts the house today, as well as many other modish improvements.

* * *

In 1645 the nearby village of Chetwynd Parva received a visit from the notorious ‘Witchfinder General’, Matthew Hopkins. Eight local people, seven women and one man, were brought before the justices of the assize on charges of witchcraft. Among them was Mary Heffer, a dairywoman at Button Manor House. All of the defendants except Mary were found guilty and hanged. She celebrated her acquittal in a local alehouse, and according to the fragmentary account left by Philip Begg, the vicar of St Laurence’s Church, ‘the sayd goody Heffer, returnyge inebriate to her cot past midnyght, let fall a Pype of Tobacco, half-Smoaked, into the bed-ſtraw and was there burnt to death without wakynge, let her Misfortune recommend the People to Temperance.’

* * *

A notable resident of the house during the 18th century was Catharine Phaedra, daughter of the future Admiral Sir Jasper Button and an enslaved African woman named as only as Bonita. Jasper, a 24-year-old naval lieutenant in the British West Indies at the time of his daughter’s birth, returned to England to deliver Kitty (as she was always known) into the care of his uncle Sir Spencer Button, who raised her as an English gentlewoman. Kitty charmed Horace Walpole, who noted in 1777 that she ‘possesses just the admixture of Perspicacity and Imbecility that Gentlemen are wont most to treasure in the Sex,’ but she was to die the following year, of what appears to have been a sudden cardiac arrest, aged only 19.

* * *

A substantial collection in the Button House library is associated with the poet Thomas Thorne (1792-1819). Thorne’s career was, even by the standard of an era that contained Rousseau and Coleridge, unusually dogged by involvement in plagiarism scandals, both as accuser and accused. His best known poem, ‘Life: An Ode’ (1819), which closes with a series of increasingly anxious questions, is believed in fact to have been written by his cousin, Lady Jane Bute-Button, with whom he was staying when he attempted to help the under-gamekeeper renovate a shotgun, and accidentally wounded himself in the ribs, dying two weeks later of sepsis. Lord Byron mentions the incident in a letter to John Murray: ‘I hear that Thorne in my side has put a ball in his, would it had been his mouth! But to that, perhaps, he is too accustomed.’ The insinuation of homosexuality is a typically Byronic flourish, but it is not supported by Thorne’s many poems of passionate amorous entreaty to women, who were invariably married or otherwise ineligible, such as ‘There thou wert toiling, a tapstress in a low gin-shop’ (1814) and ‘Touch me not! I cannot abide thy coquetry!’ (1816).

* * *

The reputation of Sir George Button (1868-1927), author of _Other Chaps’ Flowers_ (1922) and its less successful sequel _Other Flowers’ Chaps_ (1926), as an inventive and witty chronicler of LGBT+ lives, is tarnished by increasingly plausible evidence that he was criminally implicated in the tragic death of his wife Frances (1873-1908), described by Max Beerbohm (referring to a bizarre but long-standing custom at the Queen Charlotte Ball for debutantes) as ‘the plainest and primmest child ever to make curtsey to a cake.’ Sir George never returned to England after his wife’s death, but lived in Capri with two former members of his household staff. His portrait, recently discovered in a wall cavity, hangs in the smallest of the four water-closets.

* * *

During the Second World War the house was requisitioned for use as military intelligence headquarters. An apocryphal story much repeated in the locality deals with an officer who devised such a fiendishly intricate training exercise for SOE personnel that he could not himself complete it, and expired of hypothermia only two hundred yards from the gates. No death matching this description can be found in any relevant archive; indeed, only one member of the armed forces is recorded as having died at Button House during the years 1939-1945: a visiting captain of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, who succumbed to acute appendicitis. 

* * *

In the years after 1945 the upkeep of the house became an increasing strain upon Lady Heather Button (1920-2019), who attempted to maintain the property as a going concern by hosting community groups, conferences and fundraisers. By the time of her death, only three of the house’s fifty rooms were still in use. The ongoing renovations and current tour are made possible by the generous support of the National Trust Open House Summer Scheme.


	4. The history we made along the way

‘nnnnnnnnnneeerrruuuugggghhNNNNNNNEEEEEEUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURGGGGGGRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’

The flap of the box trembled slightly. Julian fell back, panting, his bouffant tumbling onto his forehead.

‘Never mind,’ Pat said, squeezing his shoulder. ‘We can try again later. It does tend to fade a bit at your stage of—death. Doesn’t it, Thomas? You used to be able to move things too, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, my ability to induce locomotion finally expired upon the very day that Queen Victoria was crowned. In retrospect it seems significant—I should write a poem. Hm, there’s an idea, _locomotion_ … how does one _do_ …the locomotion?’

‘But I don’t _want_ to wait!’ Kitty pouted, stamping her foot. ‘I want to see what they wrote about us _now_. It’s perfectly beastly, knowing people are corresponding about one, and not being able to read it.’

The assembled ghosts murmured agreement.

‘You’re just going to have to put your back into it, Julian,’ said the Captain, folding his swagger-stick under his arm. ‘The Grand Opening is at ten ack emma tomorrow. This is our last chance to correct any—infelicities in these pamphlets. One more big push, there’s a good chap.’

‘Oh, look at the poor man, he’s exhausted,’ Pat clucked. ‘We’ll wait until Alison or Mike opens them and read it over their shoulder. Anyway, there’s probably not anything about us at all. It’ll be about the artworks, and the architecture—’

‘—the pestilence-riddled bones of damned souls howling in torment—’ Mary added, matter-of-factly.

‘The pestilence-ridden bo—yes, thank you, Mary. It’s not just ghoulishness. Living people are understandably interested in what such a large grave can tell them about—about diet, and um—’

‘It’s all very well for you, Patrick,’ Fanny interjected. ‘Your connection to the house in life was incidental at best. _You_ do not run the risk of being—traduced. Those of us whose—whose _private lives_ are tied to this soil are naturally more concerned—’

Pat pressed his arms very close to his sides and clenched his fists. His lip wobbled.

‘Oh, I _say_ ,’ breathed the Captain.

‘Nuuurgh,’ Robin protested. ‘In Captain word, no cricket. We all. In this. Together.’

A small, airless silence supervened. ‘I’m sorry, Pat,’ Fanny said, pressing her fist to her bosom. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I think we’re all a bit overwrought, about becoming an—exhibit.’

‘Oi, Oi,’ said Humphrey’s head. ‘You lot.’

‘Oh, ear to the ground, Humph?’ Julian remarked.

‘Ha bloody ha. Like I have any choice. But yes, as it happens. Footsteps, middle stairs. Mike, I think.’

‘Right, right, this is it,’ the Captain said. ‘He’s coming through. No crowding. As ranking officer and a moderately disinterested party, I shall communicate the contents of the publication.’

Mike strolled into the front hall, whistling. He looked around as if he’d forgotten what he came for, while the ghosts bellowed encouragement to notice the box of leaflets.

‘Ooh,’ Mike said, finally. ‘Parcel.’

The ghosts cheered and converged. ‘Keep back, keep back,’ the Captain instructed, to general inattention.

Mike tore the parcel tape with a key and levered open the box. ‘Oh, look. Alison!’ he called. ’Alison! The leaflets have come from the printers!’

‘No, no, no, no, no—’ the Captain flailed his stick. ‘Someone—you, Julian, you go and waylay her.’

‘No! This is a chance for my reputation to be restored, my achievements acknowledged, Goggle put in its place, the machinations of Vicky Pedia finally thwarted!’

‘All right, all right, Mary, you go. You can’t read anyway.’

‘That don’t make no sense at all! I’ll never know, will I, if I amn’t here to hear you read it out?’

‘I’ll go. I’m not going to be—traduced, after all,’ Pat said, still sounding rather wounded. The other ghosts pressed forward, their sympathy and solidarity exhausted. Pat stumped off, ignored.

‘Nice production values,’ Mike remarked, sniffing the glossy paper.

‘All right, here goes.’ The Captain homed in, holding back the other ghosts with his stick. ‘There’s a picture of your old board, Robin, the one they took away and put in the museum, but it says—ritual purposes? Is that right?’

Robin made a nonchalantly scrabbling motion. ’Huh. Diggy-diggy people _always_ say that.’

‘Plague—plague—plague,’ the Captain read. ‘Lots of plague. Look, Humphrey’s in it—oh. Really. Golly. I always assumed Tower Hill, but that doesn’t really explain why he’s here in the house, does it, and it is a jolly nice façade. Lasted very well.’

Humphrey’s head muttered something with a lot of fricatives in it.

Julian sidled round and began to read upside-down, ‘Matthew Hopkins—I say, Mary, did he give you a good pricking? And—’ he peered down at the pamphlet in Mike’s hands, ‘you absolute fibbing little minx, you let us think you were burnt at the st—’

‘Oh, shut up, Julian,’ Mary snapped. ‘I felt stupid, din’t I? Or I did until _you_ got here, Master All Mouth and No Trousers, unquestioned winner of most undignified death of the second millennium of Christendom, ‘gainst all comers.’

‘Let me see!’ Kitty bounced up and down. ‘Oh! look, look, it’s me! And look, they’ve quoted silly old Horry, he was such a giddy goose. Thomas must be soon, oh look, look, yes, down there at the bottom, Thomas, Thomas, come over here.’

‘Turn over, turn over,’ the Captain admonished an oblivious Mike.

‘Bet you say that to all the boys,’ Julian said, with an oily little chuckle.

‘I beg your pard—oh, oh, oh, here we are! Thorne—plagiarism—Lady Jane—under-gamekeeper—ribs—Byron—ball—actually, on second thoughts, Thomas, if you could just remain _right_ there in the window-seat recollecting emotion in tranquillity, or whatever it is you do before you pen your immortal lay, that’s the ticket, old chap, splendid stuff.’

No words could have been more precisely calculated to end Thomas’s pensive gazing upon the lawns, but before he had a chance to dash over and see for himself, Fanny’s face turned pale even by spectral standards. She staggered backwards. ‘It’s—it’s all about _him_. As if _he_ was the one with the story. As if he _was_ the story.’

Kitty put an arm around her. ‘How terribly unfair! Men do all the horridest things, and people just think it makes them more _interesting_.’

‘That be the patriarchy for you,’ said Mary, joining them in commiseration. She offered Fanny the corner of her apron to wipe her eyes.

Mike turned to the back of the pamphlet with a nod and a grunt.

‘Acute appendicitis?’ Julian said, looking up. ‘Is that—’

The Captain coughed in an aggressively masculine manner. ‘Well, while I was _in_ the desert, with Monty of course, I didn’t actually, you know—’

The older ghosts nodded.

‘Fearsome racket you made,’ Mary said.

‘Well, appendicitis is frightfully painful, bad as a machine gun wound, the M.O. said—’

‘That’s it?’ bellowed Julian suddenly.

‘What’s it?’ said Pat, reappearing. ‘Alison’s coming, folks, try and look busy. And innocent.’

‘That’s it! Us! _community groups, conferences and fundraisers_. That’s you and me, Pat. That’s all we get! It’s outrageous!’ Julian prodded through the paper.

‘Well, I told you so. They can’t put _us_ in. People we knew are still alive, it wouldn’t be right.’

‘But—but my _legacy_!’ Julian wailed.

‘Well, honestly,’ said the Captain, his colour subsiding a little. ‘What could they have put? Julian Fawcett, nineteen forty six to nineteen ninety three, MP for Colebridge East, Minister for Administrative Affairs in the last Thatcher government, brief and disastrous tenure in the F.O. under the grey fella with the upper lip and the underpants, threw a jolly old spanner in the works of the newly-launched Back to Basics campaign when he was found in the Blue Room with half a dozen very obliging—’

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’

‘OK, people, people, people!’ Pat shouted, making a palms-down pipe-down gesture. ‘Let’s not get into— _deaths_. We’ve very successfully avoided that sensitive subject over the last thirty-five years, and—’

‘All the same,’ Fanny interrupted. ‘Julian might be being a bit—characteristically—what I mean is, his broader point is a valid one. I don’t think we can let this stand, can we? All our worst fears about this pamphlet have been realised. We’ve got to do something to make it—disappear. Before tomorrow.’

‘Absolutely!’ Thomas agreed. ‘The gin-shop wench really isn’t my best, don’t want people going off and reading that. The alexandrines are all over the—er, shop—’

‘That bloody vicar,’ Mary grumbled, ‘should have cursed his cow good and proper—’

‘I’m not sure about _Imbecility_ ,’ Kitty said, ‘when I asked Doctor Johnson he did an enormous twitch and said it meant having ever such nice ankles, but I think he just might have been not—entirely—telling the truth?’

‘See!’ Julian exclaimed. ‘That’s a majority in favour of action. You’re our strategist, Captain, get to it.’

‘I—well, I suppose, yes, it might have been worded with a trifle more gravitas, oh—hullo, Alison!’

The ghosts arranged themselves in attitudes of exaggerated blamelessness.

Alison narrowed her eyes. ‘What are you up to? You look shifty.’

‘Do I?’ Mike said, holding up the booklet. ‘I haven’t done anything this time, promise. Look, these have come. No hugely embarrassing typos, as far as I can see.’

‘Not you.’

‘Them?’

‘Them. Now.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Oh God?’

‘Well some of it…isn’t exactly flattering. To—’ Mike waved his arm imprecisely.

‘Them?’

‘Them.’

‘I’ll say it isn’t!’ Julian expostulated. ‘It’s a travesty—’

His words set off a phantasmal clamour.

‘How could you, Alison, when you know how I feel about my husband’s degenerate little memoirs—‘

‘—for Heaven’s sake, Kitty, it means idiotic—‘

‘bringing in that fraudulent barnstormer, and now this putrid letter, as if Byron wasn’t—’

‘his wig was full of nits _anyway_ —‘

‘I could’ve given her blackleg, and bluetongue, and gut worms, and woodentongue, and bloat—’

‘hypothermia—perfectly absurd, just the sort of thing that slack fool i.c. “C” company would come up with to make the typists giggle—’

‘What are they saying, Alison?’ Mike swithered about, looking everywhere except where a ghost actually was.

‘Please, please! Stop a minute! Let me take a look.’ Alison scanned the leaflet, grinning in a rather Aardman Animations fashion. ‘Ergh. I—some of it does look a bit bitchy in cold hard print. I swear, it really didn’t seem this way when Jaye and I were drafting. But, guys, the opening’s tomorrow. We’ve got to give the visitors something to explain—‘

‘Spot of Tippex?’ Pat suggested brightly. ‘No, maybe not.’

‘So what are we going to _do_?’ Fanny sighed.

Everyone was suddenly very quiet. Mike opened his mouth, but Alison held up her hand.

‘No. Thing,’ said Robin, who had been standing just outside the clamorous circle.

‘Sorry, Robin?’ Alison asked.

‘You hear. Nothing. Us do _nothing_.’

‘The other ghosts looked about to start up again, but Pat held a finger to his lips. ‘Button,’ he said. ‘As it were.’

‘Urrrgh,’ Robin groaned. ‘Hard talking about things that—not there.’ He waggled his hands around his ears.

‘Imaginary things? Abstractions?’ Pat said.

Robin nodded. ‘But me try. You had chance. To make story. Now—all gone!' He threw up his hands. 'Story for the alive people to make. Us not in charge of story. Maybe even alives not in charge. Story urrrrgh—vroom, vroom, wheely—’

‘Drive?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Story drive self. So us. Do nothing. Go for ride.’

The ghosts looked nonplussed. ‘But—’ Fanny began.

‘I think what Robin is trying to say,’ Pat mediated, ‘is actually very wise. We’re not in control of history. In fact, there isn’t really any such thing as history. Just lots of competing stories. And they’re always bound to be unfair to someone. The important thing is we acknowledge that they are, and try to tell another one next time, which might put an opposing point of view.’

Alison and the ghosts digested this. Mike, blinking and shaking his head, gave a leave-you-to-it shrug, and made for the door.

‘Pat,’ Alison said, ‘did you just say the real history is the friends we made along the way?’

‘No. Though come to think, that is a very nice _original_ way of putting it, isn’t it?’ Pat beamed.

Alison took a deep breath, decided that the ghosts’ introduction to TV Tropes could very definitely wait until the visitors’ season was over, and said, ‘Yeah. Sort of—heartwarming.’ She looked hopefully around.

The ghosts murmured and shuffled.

‘All right,’ Fanny conceded. ‘But next summer’s edition of your little Baedeker will be composed to _my_ dictation.’

‘ _Next_ summer?’ Alison said, astonished. ‘Yeah—right, next summer, absolutely. Right. You’ve got a deal.’ She stuck out her hand.

‘Of course,’ Fanny said, with the faintest shade of a smile, ‘a _lady_ never shakes hands on a bargain.’ She spat emphatically into her palm.

Alison felt a tiny chill, and the faintest scent of dusty mignonette wafted on the air as Fanny’s hand met hers. ‘Next summer,’ Alison repeated, and picked up the box of booklets.

Next summer, after all, was a whole year of misadventure away. Anything could happen.

‘Come on then,’ Alison said. ‘There’s shedloads of stuff to do before tomorrow, and—well, you can’t help with any of it, but it would be a shame not to have you around.’ The ghosts flooded after her.

‘Ahem!’ coughed Humphrey’s head. ‘As the only historically verified victim of parricide here, do you think I could possibly get a bit of—sympathy? A lift? No, suppose not, too much to ask. Arseholes.’

His body dithered on the other side of the vestibule, seemed to make some kind of determination, and turned on its heel.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Bret Harte's poem [A Newport Romance](https://www.bartleby.com/270/13/190.html).


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